eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana rewatch 2015: episode seven, Heart on a Chain

I feel like I want fic about Eerie's zombie basketball team after seeing the opening credits for the third time today. Off to the fic fest!

So the one of the tombstones at the start of the episode says WEYL on it. What? What does that mean? Also I think one in the foreground says "hunt powerz". What the hell.

Love that Mars apparently names all his pets after old-timey movie monsters. Nosferatu, Mothra, Godzilla... that is a kid with an excellent VHS collection.

Haha, when the raven landed on Devon's gravestone and squawked, one of the ravens outside squawked back.

Annabel Lee has some serious shoulder pads going on. Also its weird that shes so enthusiastic about a little girl with a life threatening heart condition. Like, when she says it, her whole face lights up.

That blond kid sat at the desk in front of Mars is trying so hard not to look at the camera.

It makes me super happy that Danielle Harris still does horror movies. She is 50% of the reason I watched See No Evil 2 (the other half being Katharine Isabelle) and the whole time I was like, COME ON JACOB DONT GO AFTER MELANIE DEVONS GHOST WILL MESS YOU UP!

Love that bit where Devon impresses Melanie by riding his skateboard, and Mara tries to compete by... slowly riding his bike in a circle. Thats just... what, it doesnt even impress anyone! Every time I watch this episode I laugh at this scene. Its global tten to the point where my partner and I will mime riding a bike in a circle when we find something underwhelming.

...did Devon just ride off with her books?

I kinda want to hear more about product developments beautiful lab assistant, and also the love story of Syndi, Doug and Rick.

Hahah, I love Edgars face when Mars gets angry and knocks over his water, and Omris ragey expression and angry headshake as he dabs it up.

This episode is making me so hungry; the Tellers awesome roast dinner and Elvis's stack of burgers... so much nice looking food! Also,I really like the idea of getting love tips from Elvis, even if theyre kind of impractical. Whats a thirteen ear old girl.gonna do wth a cadillac? probably die, in all honesty.

Table football is such a weird game to play with three of you on a proto-date. Surely that just translates to Melanie being super bored watching Devon and Mars play each other?

Man, Devon is so ahead on points. Skateboard versus riding in slow circles on a bike, necklace versus snakes in a shitty plastic heart... Mars, you are so lucky he didd because you would never have gotten a look in if he was still on the scene.

Pitbull surfers skateboard, nice! and honestly having devons ghost hamg ariund her is the best case scenario when your drs name is romero...

Also, how glad is Mars that he didnt throw a fit about Devon wanting to ask Melanie oit, considering he was killed a few minutes later?

Love that bit where Marilyn tells Syndi that guys are only worth it so
etimes and Edgar smiles. Also, LOVE the tellers ridic colective Awwwwwww when mars brings melanie home.

I really love the idea of a radio that is permentantly tuned into the 1930s. and send and marilyn are all, OMG LOOK AT YOUR DATE OMG SO CUTE TAKE PHOTOS and edgars like, come on, fives a crowd, omg I love everything about his fam this episode.

melanies photo shrine to devon is insane. you were in school with him for like two weeks, how did you get that many pictures?! esp that black and white james dean one. actually as I wrote that I figured they probably have one of those weird roadside shrines where he died and she took them from there.

I love Danielle Harris, I think you can't have grown up in the 90s and not, hah.

But yeah, the shrine, and the 'I miss him every day!' line. It’s only been like, a week!

Also, Marshall’s a wee bit controlling (I guess Melanie has a type, what with stalker Devon.)

yeah, theres a lot of him shouting at her in the later half of the epiosde - like, dude, you know she literally just had a heart transplant, you probably shouldnt be stressing her out by yelling!

"you walk like him, ride a skateboard like him" - sorry I cant ride my bike in slow circles for thrills, marshall, jeez!

so if marshall isnt around, does simon spend his day spinning on a massive wooden wheel outside the world o stuff?sad times.

love the obelisk gravstone. so weird.

so, right, I totally understand that she takes off the necklace and leaves it on devons grave marker, but I dont understand why she gives it to mars afterwards.like, what, its his turn to carry the ghost or something?

also, id be raging if I was at my first bfs grave, trying to get a handle on my grief, and my.new bf shows up and congratulated on my emotional health or whatever. like, fuck off marshall, some shit is not about you.

I do love the weird shot of simon watching them, tho. so lurky and bizarre and hilarious.

also, that bit where marshall says their first kiss was also their last, and it immediately shows the shot of the grim reaper headed off in he direction melanie walks in, totally makes me wonder if she died.

The giving the necklace to Mars thing I never figured out.

I mean, I know it was probably so he had something to put in the evidence locker at the end of the episode, and it would have been weird and wrong to have him grab it off the statue by himself, but what was Melanie supposed to be thinking there?

right? I dont get how you go from "heres a token from my dead boyfriend" to "this is a totally appropriate thing to give to the boyfriend I had after him, who I just broke up with". like, is it a consolation prize, or is her thinking that its the necklace haunted and shes like, fuck it, you deal with the ghost now?

She's got the ultimate prize from Devon, and harvested his organs (muhaha!), she doesn't want to be greedy!

That's true. She's got his real heart; she can let Mars have the fake one because she know he loved him, too. (Even though she's not allowed to say anything on a TV show for kids in the 1990s.)

Edited 2015-09-14 10:08 (UTC)

...thanks guys, I just laughed in the middle of my silent office of total hard workers when that comment notification came through...

I was talking to someone about this episode, and she was a fan when it first aired but hasnt seen it since, and she remembered this ep as a kid actually killing another for his organs, and I was like, no, it was an accident... BUT GASP WHAT IF IT WASNT?!

Ooh...now that's a creepy fic possibility!

right? melanie as the faux-innocent black widow, preying on men not for their fortunes, but for their precious, precious organs...

I love the way this show uses its soundtrack. The slightly sad key, but in a dreamy melancholy memories way that fits with Marshall's narration. And then suddenly leaning on the piano in a deep discordant tone that is timed with the crow landing...

"Hanging out" in English class means sitting two desks away and watching this crazy kid with his back to me repeatedly not stab his hand...

There is a massive poster of a cross section of a heart on the wall. Of the English classroom. Way to setdress to drive home a point regardless of traditional classroom posters for English classes.

That's got to have been pretty gruesome for a milk truck going that slowly to actually kill a person. And Mars saw it happen. Yet he's still fairly well adjusted afterwards.

Also Marshall, you need to brush up your game. Not only where you looking in the 75% off section of the shop, that's what you went with? This is why Simon is your best friend...

A little flavour of what Simon does to delay having to go home when Marshall is too busy running around with kids his own age :s

That shot with the Grim Reaper walking towards Melanie is just pure creepy.

brushing up on his game suggests that he actually has game. he is completely gameless. he is devoid of all game. he is a vacuum of anti-game energy.

unless his game is "ride my bike in slow circles to impress a girl". oh dear. I may or may be rewatching that scene on my laptop and trying to figure out how gif making works.

maybe thats why simon was hanging out, spinning on his giant wooden wheel? like, next time he sees mars, he'll tactfully suggest a different choice of gifts.

Simon's like "So Mars likes going around in circles on wheels? Wait until he sees this!"

Gah. Gif making. All the gifs in the last ten years that never got made by me because I can't figure that stuff out efficiently...

but what does simon like more - spinning on his massive wheel, or standing on a pillar holding a cigar laughing in a dead weird way and declaring that he doesnt wanna be a banana like in dead letter?

also,YES for the soundtrack. so much of the background music/sound effects in this is amazing

That's got to have been pretty gruesome for a milk truck going that slowly to actually kill a person.

ugh, right? thats gotta have an element of put it in reverse and.did it again

My very favorite episode of Eerie varies with each re-watch, but this one is up there.

I love how Syndi, normally so oblivious to so many things that go on in town, can narrow in on her little brother's experiencing a crush with scary, laser-like precision. And of course, the whole family has to be embarrassingly adorable.

Though I can never watch this episode without thinking Mars has a bit of a thing for Devon, too.

This is the ep that made me realize Edgar must have been a boy genius. The approximate ages of the kids and the fact that he had his own assistant when he was still dating Marilyn suggests he had a lot of lab responsibility at a very young age.

This is one of the best episodes for random background stuff, too. The "Help me! Help me!" when the camera's focused on the spider web, and Death at the very end headed in Melanie's direction...

My opinion on whether she made it home alive tends to vary with each re-watch, too.

agreed. I kind of alternate between like, six episodes that are my favourites, but this one is always on the list.

older sibs totally have a sixth sense for their baby brothers potential crushes. of course, syndi mostly uses her powers for good instead of deliberately embarrasing him, but still. I think shes tuned out of the towns weirdness, but very much tuned into whats going on with mars in terms of his personal life.

I totally get a bit of an OT3 vibe from Mars Devon and Melanie. I just dont think you invite another dude along to play table football with you while the girl you like watches unless theres a bit of crushage going on. plus he was way enthusiastic at the start when he was talking about how cool and smart devon was and watching him do that thing with the pen and his hand.

its such a weird creepy ending for her,esp in contrast with mars whose like, whelp, just got dumped, hey simon, lets go look for ufos.

I loved your fic with Melanie, btw, especially the Melanie/Syndi part. I must have totally zoned the last time I watched on the Death figure following Melanie, because my headcanon was: 'Aw, bb!Danielle Harris in flannel, she's totally going to end up chasing girls, and if Eerie gets weird about it, go 'No, it's the heart's influence, honest!' ;)

The heart wants what the heart wants... :)

And thank you!

melanie will be a total smoothie with the ladies aswell. nobody can resist danielle harris's dimples

*nods*

This is a true thing.

Melanie was my favorite one-episode character, and I've wanted an ending for her for years now. What I finally succeeded in doing was writing endings, which I'm okay with.

I think "I never kissed her again, because she never made it out of the cemetery" and "I never kissed her again, because next time she was a part of my life, she was dating my sister" are both valid interpretations of the text as it stands. So maybe all of those are true, and I can decide which one--or something else entirely--goes with "our" Eerie with each re-watch.

in eerie, someone dating your sister is robably a more effected ve way to kill your romantic interest than being dead, since dying doesnt actually seem to be much of an obstacle to your dating life in that town...

Heck, in the world that is my fic-writing brain, even being killed by somebody in Eerie doesn't necessarily preclude you eventually winding up in a long-term relationship with them...

lets be honest, dash took a pretty good crack at killing him and a big chunk of fandom is still like, yup, theyre a couple. murder attempts are just something most couples google.co through at some stage

Aw, I love this one. And meta wise, I think outside the Dash episodes, this and the 'Dead Letter Office' most strongly support a queer reading of Mars.

Devon at least seems to like Melanie on some kind of genuine level (so much as young teenagers can) - it's interesting that Mars says he likes Melanie because she's 'living on the frontier of life and death' (as is Devon, of course, with his little death wish, and later literally) whereas Devon terms his feelings as fixing her problem ('I'd give her my heart!') rather than liking her because of she's 'weird'. (And yeah, giving her a crappy present!)

It's also Mars who first identifies the competitive aspect that lead to their threeway bonding (lol) with his 'Not if I get there first!' remark.

It's pretty much 'subtext rapidly becoming text', imho, (within the confines of a bunch of 13 year olds in a kids show, lol) - there's the 'I hung out with him because in Eerie, we were both outsiders' line; how Melanie is explicitly linked to Mars' feelings for Devon, both because of the heart and because of their shared 'weird'ness and association with death.

Then how kissing Mars makes Devon's heart beat faster; and Melanie giving Mars Devon's heart necklace at the end... (Oh, and Mars exiting with Simon, Casablanca-style.)

I also love how hilariously grown-up all the kids are, not just with the Romeo and Juliet plotline, but how the boys consult each other on whether it's okay to ask out Melanie, as well as Marshall's 'Welcome to Mars' line.
(And Devon must have had some extraordinarily well-prepared parents with how quickly his heart was donated. I'd expect nothing less from Eerie, tbh.)

The 'Melanie had changed' bit is funny, like she's active and takes risks, oh noes! I mean, you get what they're trying to do, but the paternal 'Do you think you should be doing that?' to her...playing with a pencil is ridic. She's spent her whole life unable to do anything, even aside from Devon dying, there's reason enough to go a little ott.

I love everything about this comment, just so you know. also I wanna rewatch casablanca so I can write a ridiculous ei/casablanca crossover thingie.

I think milk truck related death in eerie is like vampire related deaths in sunnydale - every parent knows theres a good chance their kids wont make it to adulthood and adpats their expectations accordingly. melanies parents probably moved here because there are so many kids dying and leaving their organs around, they knew it was their best chance at picking up a spare heart.

I knew a kid in highschool who did that pencil trick with a compass. he was totally the badass of our whole class.

There is an episode of Carmilla where the title character is doing the trick with a very large knife in the background.

I may have squeeed a lot when I saw that.

I need that watch this. I still have a few eps of gravity falls to watch and then camilla is next on the list.

so weird and awesome how an ei rewatch ended up introducing me to a load of other shows... it reminds me of when lj was a bit livelier and you got that kind of awesome crosspollination more often

I miss LJ. I sort of lurk on tumblr, since that's where most of fandom seems to have migrated to, but it's just not the same.

I think next up for me is Night Vale, then Gravity Falls.

I like tumblr for the comedy memes etc but I find it really hard to interact with people on there. its just loads of likes and reblogs and the commenting system is dead unfriendly

She's spent her whole life unable to do anything, even aside from Devon dying, there's reason enough to go a little ott.

Yep. I've always read the "I wish I could do that" aspect as part of her attraction to Devon in the first place. And when she finally can, well, who can blame her? Except Mars, apparently. Then again, he just did watch the other part of their OT3 get squashed by a milk truck, so it's easy to see why he might be feeling a bit overprotective.

so im totally off to the fic fest to ask for devon/melanie/mars fic.

Eerie, Indiana rewatch 2015: episode seven, Heart on a Chain

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